King of the Ring

It's a summer night in Cleveland, and Vince McMahon, for once in his
combative life, is backing down from a conflict. The chairman of the
World Wrestling Federation is offering to bury the hatchet with his
perennial antagonist, Stone Cold Steve Austin. Fans who've seen Austin
repeatedly throw McMahon to the ground during matches over the past 18
months can't believe McMahon is even daring to enter the ring.

As he and Austin eye each other, McMahon offers his hand. Austin glares,
eyeing McMahon as a freak. Austin pauses. Maybe it's an offer worth
taking.

McMahon's hand remains in the air.

Austin moves forward, raises his right hand, and then, swiftly, in the
manner of the classic prank, yanks it back. Then he tells McMahon, the
sold-out crowd and millions of TV viewers that he'd prefer breaking
McMahon's arm. And once that is done, Austin declares that he'd enjoy
nothing more than shoving McMahon's thumb up McMahon's posterior--though
posterior isn't the word he uses.
The fans go nuts. Few things make them happier than seeing McMahon eat
crow.

The rejected McMahon exits the ring. The crowd is eager to see him
depart, serenading him with that popular farewell, "Nah, nah, nah, nah,
nah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, hey--goodbye!"
McMahon trudges down the aisle. The boos continue.
Just as McMahon is about to leave the arena, he turns on his heels and
flips the crowd a double bird.
For McMahon, it was another entry for his hypothetical biography, Just
Another Day in Paradise.

To hear McMahon explain it, the romance of our lives revolves around our
wants. Needs? Inanimate objects? Merely utilitarian, way too static. "I
don't relate well to things," he says, sitting behind his desk at WWF's
base of operations, a four-story building in Stamford, Connecticut,
that shimmers in the daylight and, in the manner of a pirate ship, waves
a WWF flag off its side. "Products? Eccchhhh!"

Bring on the animate, the mobile and, best of all for the raw
meat-loving McMahon, the visceral, and you tap into something much more
powerful than simple satisfaction. You encounter our appetite for
adventure, that carnal lust for thrills, excitement and, yes, an escape
from the tedium of daily living. In his gut, in his heart, in his mouth,
Vince McMahon believes the World Wrestling Federation satisfies these
public yearnings better than any business in America. "No one is as
sensitive to public taste as us," he says. "We have our own focus group
200 times a year. We're about what people want."

What they want are high-impact events like "SummerSlam." The August 22
rendition of this pay-per-view program was held at Minneapolis's Target
Center in front of 19,404 fans and millions more who typically forked
over $29.95 for the telecast. In large part, "SummerSlam" was no
different than hundreds of other WWF events: slamming bodies,
trash-talking plot lines that twist good and evil, big boys throwing
each other onto a mat, gratuitous chair-whackings, intermittent
appearances from slinky, large-busted women; all the components that
make wrestling, in McMahon's words, "the best and only true variety show
on television."

Adding even more credibility, if you will, was the presence of Jesse
"The Body" Ventura, the former mid-level WWF wrestler who shocked the
world by becoming governor of Minnesota. Ventura was referee for this
edition of SummerSlam, which was the main event for the WWF
championship.

"There's a lot of media saying I'm a disgrace for being here," Ventura
said that evening. "I'll tell you this: I'm proud of wrestling. I'm
proud to be a wrestler and I'm proud to be here tonight." The crowd
responded with a standing ovation and repeated chants of "Jesse, Jesse"
throughout the evening. Wearing a long-sleeved black-and-white referee
shirt, Ventura--only a footnote when he refereed a 1988 SummerSlam--took
charge with all the gusto McMahon and the WWF fans have come to love.

"You're in my state now," Ventura barked to Triple H, one of three
wrestlers competing that evening. "I am law and order here."
Prior to the event, Ventura had bragged that he was "bigger and more
powerful than Vince McMahon." Prove it, McMahon would likely bark back.
At 6-foot, 2-inches and 230 pounds, McMahon has a commanding presence.
His eyes resemble dense brown stones, friendly at first glance, but
unwavering, and taking on a laser-like intensity at the slightest
prompt. Even if a governor holds more clout than a big-time promoter
does, McMahon will gladly cherish the struggle.

Consider McMahon's long-standing rivalry with media mogul Ted Turner. In
the early 1980s, when Turner sensed the potential of wrestling and
sought to buy the WWF, he told McMahon, "Vince, I'm in the 'rassling
business." "Fine, Ted," countered McMahon; "I'm in the entertainment
business." Rebuffed by McMahon, Turner launched World Championship
Wrestling (WCW), signing WWF stars. "The only bad guy I know is Ted
Turner," says McMahon. But how bad can he be when each is winning in the
marketplace? Even rivalry is but a plot point. Several years ago, the
WWF created a hayseed character called "Billionaire Ted."

Flip as McMahon's comeback line may seem, the truth is that
entertainment has been the cornerstone of the WWF's success. Back in the
mid-1980s, McMahon publicly admitted what everyone knew for years:
plots were built in advance by a team of writers, producers, directors
and technical experts, the lines scripted (albeit with room for improv),
the outcomes predetermined.

McMahon's announcement liberated wrestling from dealing with complicated
licensing fees and costly state athletic commissions. McMahon
subsequently coined the obvious but useful term "sports entertainment"
to describe his business. The WWF made its focus even more emphatic
later in the decade when, in February 1989, just as the New Jersey
Senate was deciding whether to remove wrestling from the jurisdiction of
the state athletic commission (which levies a 10 percent surtax on
profits from TV revenues), a WWF statement declared that wrestling
should be defined as "an activity in which participants struggle
hand-in-hand primarily for the purpose of providing entertainment to
spectators rather than conducting a bona fide athletic contest."

"Wrestling had been promoted as a sport," says McMahon, "but it wasn't
true even back when Abraham Lincoln wrestled. So I said, 'Let's level
with our audience and corporate America.' To The New York Times, it was
big news. To us, it was a way to tell Madison Avenue, 'This is who we
are.'

"Just look at all the elements on our show. It's action-adventure. But
it's also a talk show. But someone else might say it's a cartoon beyond
belief. Or it's a soap opera, or a grandiose rock concert. And the
athleticism is nothing short of extraordinary. We have no boundaries or
limitations. We can go anywhere we want to. We're only limited by our
imagination and creativity. We take the best of show biz and roll it all
into one."

Lately it's been rolling pretty darn good. Over the past two years,
according to WWF estimates, revenues have tripled, from $81.9 million in
1997 to $251.5 million for the 1999 fiscal year that ended on April 30.
Better yet, net profits, down $6.5 million in '97, were up $56 million
in fiscal '99. World Wrestling Federation Entertainment holds more than
200 live events each year in major stadiums and arenas throughout the
world. Every week, WWF produces nine hours of original television
programming for such outlets as USA Network and UPN. This year, "Raw is
War," WWF's USA Network entry, was the top-rated cable program for 19
straight weeks. WWF's three cable programs ("Raw is War" is often broken
into two programs, "Raw Is War" and "War Zone," and there's also
"Sunday Night Heat") earned 26 of the top 30 rankings on the Nielsen
list of most-watched shows among all basic cable networks. During the
week of July 26 to August 1, for example, the highest ratings on basic
cable networks (approximately 15 to 20 networks in each of 212
designated market areas) were all earned by WWF programs, each viewed in
more than 5 million homes.

The WWF also distributes its programming and pay-per-view events to more
than 150 nations in nine languages. WWF markets and sells its branded
merchandise through a network of some 85 licensees worldwide; publishes
two monthly magazines with a combined annual circulation of
approximately 5.8 million; and distributes news and information about
its programming and products through its www.wwf.com Internet site.

The empire took even bigger strides on August 3 when WWF (the parent
company was formerly known as Titan Sports) declared its intention to
become a publicly held company by offering approximately $172.5 million
in class A stock and earn a NASDAQ listing. Such august bodies as Bear,
Stearns; Credit Suisse First Boston; Merrill Lynch and Wit Capital were
slated to manage the IPO. A New York Post article estimated WWF's
potential value at $750 million.

Alan Dundes, professor of anthropology and folklore at the University
of California at Berkeley, believes historical events are a major reason
for wrestling's recent ascent. "Since the end of the Cold War, there's
no one for us to beat up on, no real hated enemy like we had with the
Soviet Union for so many years," says Dundes. "We've had a hard time
finding outlets for our machismo. On the face of it, we condemn
violence. But any chance for a culturally sanctioned escape is worth it.
We don't really want to see blood. Wrestling is actually a good
thing--far better to see this stuff come out on a playing field than in
battle. The hype's almost more fun than the game itself."

Though he decries "egghead philosophers who try to tell us what we are,"
even McMahon notes a historical connection surrounding the evolution of
WWF plot lines. In the 1980s, echoing the Cold War, it was mostly a
matter of good guys versus bad guys. "Black and white, pretty simple,"
he says. "But now we're into more entendres, different shadings."
One plot line, for example, saw a female wrestler named Chyna accused of
sexual harassment by the poetic, soft-spoken, 300-pound Mark Henry.
Another conflict you weren't likely to see in wrestling's old days
involved pretty boy Val Venis stealing Terri, the wife of Dustin
Runnels, who had earlier turned into Golddust, a blond-wigged
cross-dresser. Throw in The Undertaker, who at times has been in a feud
with his long-lost brother, the mute Kane, and you can see why WWF's
twisting story lines have been compared to David Lynch's surreal TV
show, Twin Peaks.

"We're all somewhat flawed, and people like seeing that aspect of
people, too," says McMahon. "It's much more complicated. Is any of us
necessarily all good or all bad?" But the bottom line: "In a word, it's
fun. Every night is Saturday night for me. This isn't work. When you can
entertain millions and millions of fans all over the world, that's a
great sign, a great thrill, as great as it gets in business."

Plans are underway at the WWF for continued expansion--CDs, Web sites,
books, magazines--all part of McMahon's relentless crusade to "build a
brand." As his 29-year-old son, Shane, president of the company's new
media division, puts it: "The model is Disney." The Disney connection to
family values continues with the involvement of McMahon's 22-year-old
daughter, Stephanie, a WWF ad sales account executive who at times has
entered the ring and been abducted by wrestlers seeking vengeance on
McMahon.

And yet, for all of McMahon's desire to please, for all his love of
entertainment and pleasure, please, sir, do not in any way confuse him
with an imperial entertainment mogul. He is no Michael Eisner,
descending from the mountain in tie and jacket to cuddle awkwardly with
Mickey Mouse. It's hard to imagine McMahon wearing chinos and gingerly
sipping Chardonnay at those patrician-style outings of the rich and
famous. "They can sit in their ivory towers all they want," he says of
other entertainment industry honchos. "Me, I'm very middle-class. We're
about Peoria here. I'm very comfortable being of the people."

On November 9, 1997, after years of delighting in his behind-the-scenes
role of promoter and TV announcer, McMahon took a step into the WWF
arena. Reigning champion Bret "Hitman" Hart was competing in his native
Canada. A son of an old-time wrestling promoter, Hart wasn't enjoying
the brassy, in-your-face approach McMahon was taking. Goosed by McMahon,
Hart began lecturing from the ring, daring fans to examine why they
loved bad guys--and even imploring them to ponder broader social issues
such as racism and poverty. This being the entertainment business,
Hart's popularity plummeted.

By the November 9 event, Hart had been planning to leave the WWF.
McMahon didn't want him taking the championship belt with him, so he
decided to strip Hart of his title. No way, said Hart, who was ready to
leave, but justifiably knew that defeat on his home turf would sharply
diminish his reputation and negotiating leverage with WCW. On the other
hand, there was no way McMahon was going to let someone walk away from
the WWF with the esteemed belt in his hands.
"We were at loggerheads," says McMahon. "I decided that Bret was losing
the WWF championship. I've always had the courage of my convictions. I
told the audience what happened. They wanted to boo me off the stage."
Instantly, McMahon knew he was on to something.

"We realized then we could put me in a venue where the public could
express its anger," he says. He took on the role of "Mr. McMahon" (OK,
so it's not the most creative nom de guerre), a tight-fisted, combative
promoter who kept the WWF wrestlers on a tight leash--and naturally
nourished an atmosphere of bitter, physical anger among his charges.

The "Mr. McMahon" character's most bitter battles were with Stone Cold
Steve Austin. Rough around the edges, unwilling to bow to authority,
Austin agrees that, "Like Vince McMahon says, I'm a corporate nightmare.
I don't dress up a whole lot. Sometimes my language is a little
offensive. I drink a few beers on TV. I'm not a yes man. I do what I
want, when and how I want." One night, Austin whupped a Bible-thumping
wrestler, who in turn began spouting lines from John 3:16. "Well," said
Austin, "Steve 3:16 goes like this--I just kicked your ass."

In rapid
order, the WWF created a line of "Austin 3:16" T-shirts that are de
rigeur for Austin fans. You can also buy an oversized foam hand that
says "Austin 3:16" and features, instead of the classic "We're Number
One" finger, an extended middle digit. Lest you think this makes Austin
unpopular across the American heartland, take heed that he is a featured
face in the famous "Milk Moustache" campaign.

Adding more spice to this is that Shane McMahon took on the role of
Austin's advocate, creating a provocative father-son conflict. "We've
seen this on 'Dallas' and 'Dynasty,' " says father Vince. "It's made for
great theater."
It should be noted that McMahon's finger-flaring exit in Cleveland took
place shortly before the WWF declared its intent to go public. Around
Wall Street, the period between filing your paperwork with the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to go public and the IPO is
known as "the quiet period," when CEOs are urged by the SEC not to
excessively hype their organization lest they skew perceptions of the
corporation's value. McMahon's truculence ("giving the bird" is an
action that he resorts to frequently) is hardly the stuff that gets you
written up as an avatar of synergy, new media, convergence or any of
those other terms so popular in the entertainment industry. So much the
better, McMahon believes.

"When I see the lack of interaction and the egos of a lot of corporate
executives, I want to break them down," says McMahon. "That's a
wrestling term for getting down to the ground. I want to bring them down
to the ground and make them be with the people, so they're a foot from
the sewer. I'd like to hold them there for a day or two, to be of the
street. Keeping our nose to the ground is what we're about."

The image of McMahon pinning an Eisner or a Turner proves that while you
can take the boy out of wrestling, you can't take the wrestling out of
the man. Businesslike and polite as McMahon can be ("Would you like a
protein bar? Something to drink? We're going to have a good talk," he
tells a guest), within him beats the heart not of an entertainer, but of
a combatant. Vince McMahon is a fighter, not a lover. "There's always
an interest in mano a mano," he says. "It's inbred in us as human
beings."

Certainly that is the case for McMahon, who, he claims, has never backed
down from anyone in his life. Vincent Kennedy McMahon was born in
Pinehurst, North Carolina, on August 24, 1945. His parents divorced soon
after. Vince was raised by his mother and a series of stepfathers.
"They were all assholes," he says, recalling with rancor the men who
would blur the line between discipline and abuse. Young Vince, fighting
back, adapted a motto he carries to this day: "As long as you live
through it, you survive."

Sports were the natural outlet for the combative youngster. Muscular and
lean, Vince once threw five innings of a perfect game against a Little
League all-star team that had not included him on its roster. But his
volatility--"I had a violent temper. Losing--WOW!--that would send me up
the wall."--coupled with his utter lack of discipline, soon drove him
off the athletic fields. The popular term in those days was "juvenile
delinquent," and Vince, in his terms "majoring in bad ass," fit the
description to a tee.

Not until the age of 12 did he meet his biological father, Vincent James
McMahon (Vince adamantly points out that he is "not a junior"). The
elder McMahon was following in the footsteps of his father, Jess, as a
wrestling promoter in the Northeast.
Vincent James ran an operation called the Capitol Wrestling Federation,
stretching from the Uline Arena in Washington, D.C., all the way to
Maine, including the center of the wrestling universe, Madison Square
Garden in New York City. But Capitol Wrestling was only one of many
regional wrestling groups run by promoters (such as Bret Hart's father,
Stu, in Calgary) who worked under a gentleman's agreement not to raid
one another's territory.

Those were the days of dank, smoky arenas and
such overblown, campy characters as "Gorgeous George," a wonderfully
contoured, heavily made-up wrestler who came into the ring sporting
blond curls and a sequined robe. The overall effect made him look like a
buffed-up Liberace.
The six weeks a summer young Vince spent with his father opened his
eyes. "Oh my God! My dad was incredible," says McMahon, letting down his
guard and sounding almost vulnerable. "I wanted to be part of his
world. I loved the promotion business. I'd hang with him at the
wrestling; it was like being the kid in the candy store. I liked the
roar of the crowd. I liked the charismatic people. I liked the
entertainment. I liked all of it."

One exceptionally magnetic "performer" who caught Vince's eye was a Dr.
Jerry Graham. Momentarily returning to contemporary CEO mode, McMahon
admonishes: "We don't refer to our performers as wrestlers. They're
artists. What people like Steve Austin do with their bodies--combining
athleticism with performance--is nothing short of incredible." Dr. Jerry
Graham was a 6-foot-3, 300-pound giant who used peroxide in his hair
and always dressed in red. Naturally, Vince took to wearing all red,
right down to the shoes. When Graham suggested the scrawny youngster
work out in a gym, McMahon found himself remarkably motivated.

As McMahon recalls, "Jerry drove around in this '59 Caddy convertible
with big fins, and when he was out in public, he'd light his cigars with
$100 bills. I'm thinking, 'This is the life.' So I'd try to smoke
cigars when I was a kid, and I'd cough and sputter and spew. But it
looked so cool the way Jerry handled it--something to do with his hands.
Cigars were a big deal--performers, the booking office, heck, you could
cut the smoke with a knife. Cigar smoking was a manly thing to do--if
you could afford it."
Finding that money, though, was a long way off. His mother was a
secretary in a government office. The stepfathers were hardly affluent.
Meanwhile, Vince was uncontrollable.

"I had a choice of either going to a state-supported reform school or
military school. My dad was, in his words, able to 'spring' for it," he
says of his journey to Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro,
Virginia. "At 14, I had no reputation, so it was a new beginning, a
great chance to start over and create a new reputation."
Well, to paraphrase the old lyric from The Who's "Won't Get Fooled
Again," meet the new Vince--same as the old Vince.

McMahon went on to become the first cadet in Fishburne's 100-plus years
to be court-martialed, albeit, he points out in painstaking detail,
unsuccessfully. What happened was that on the eve of his graduation, it
was rumored that he was planning to sabotage the ceremony. A
court-martial proceeding was quickly convened. But thanks to the backing
of his teachers, who appreciated McMahon's efforts in improving his
grades, he was cleared of the charges. It would not be the last time
McMahon stood down his accusers.
Even then, the entertainer in McMahon couldn't resist himself. "The
morning of graduation," he says, "I walked up to this old colonel we had
and said, 'You thought I was going to fuck up finals. But now, wait and
see what I'm going to do.' He recoiled, and then I said, 'Just
kidding.' "

After Fishburne, McMahon enrolled at East Carolina College in
Greeenville, North Carolina. Education, though, took a backseat to his
true passion. Several years earlier, at 16, McMahon had met a
13-year-old named Linda Edwards, falling in love instantly--with her
parents, Henry and Evelyn, that is.
"I had no idea what a family was until I met Linda, and saw how they
lived," he says. "It was an Ozzie and Harriet life. There wasn't
screaming and beating. 'You see,' I thought, 'there's something else.' I
wanted some of that stability and love. And then I wanted more of it."

McMahon married Linda after his sophomore year of college, on August 6,
1966. McMahon's father wasn't pleased with the choice, but as usual, the
son took action his way. "My dad thought if I got married it would stop
me from graduating," says McMahon. "I knew that marrying Linda would
ensure that I'd graduate. Linda's a whiz. She's more structured, she's
more disciplined. All I'd learned from military school about discipline
was how to get around it."
East Carolina was also the place where McMahon learned to smoke cigars.
Four or five times a semester, whether he was hanging around the dorms
or hitting the local pubs, McMahon and his buddies would smoke a few
cigars and, as he puts it, "do things college-age men do," he says,
adding, "I really like them most after a big meal. I love steak, but
when you're in college, you do what you do, so back then it was more
having a hamburger and later, a cigar."

Five years after entering East Carolina, McMahon earned a degree in
marketing. His sights were set on the family business, but his father
wouldn't hear it. "I always wanted to be in the promotion business,"
says McMahon. "You have certain genes, I guess. My dad wanted the
opposite for me. He knew how feast or famine it was. He wanted the
pension for me, something secure."

This time, McMahon listened--or at least he tried. He started by selling
adding machines, then moved on to ice cream-related products. "So one
day I'm at a Tastee-Freeze talking about cups and cones and plastic
seal, and the guy's looking right through me. And I say, 'You don't
care, do you?' And he says, 'No, I don't. Now is this going to be a good
deal or what?' And I realized I didn't really care, either." There
followed a brief stint in a rock quarry.
Appealing again to his father, McMahon was at last granted a promotional
territory in 1972--Bangor, Maine, considered the Siberia of the McMahon
wrestling empire.

"'Here's your one shot,' my dad told me. 'If it's not a success, don't
ever ask to be in the business again.' I cut my promotional teeth in
Bangor. You take an event, you book the hall. You can tell how old-time I
am when I call it a hall."
Wrestling in those days was still emerging from its decrepit, lowbrow
era of musky gyms, dimly lit arenas and hokey programming. "Promoters
didn't do much," says McMahon. "Some were still doing studio wrestling,
where you'd bring a crowd of 60 people into a studio. Magazines were on a
cheap paper, all filled with blood and guts. I had this instinct
wrestling could be better, bigger."

Television was the key. Bringing in more cameras, improving lighting,
cleaning up the arenas, and spending heavily on advertising and airtime,
McMahon took wrestling out of the Stone Age. His education was helped
significantly when he purchased the 5,000-seat Cape Cod Coliseum in 1979
and brought in a wide range of entertainment, from rock concerts to
sports events and comedians. Whether he was studying licensing deals,
creating colorful merchandise or exploring new tricks in stage
placement, McMahon at last was attending "school" full-time. His father,
pondering retirement, began letting his son take an increasingly larger
role in all aspects of the business. (Vince's older brother, Rod,
involved in the oil business in Texas, has had nothing to do with
wrestling.)

Vince took over the business in 1982. He declines to say what he paid
for it. "It scared me to death," he says, "but I wanted it, too." The
McMahons and their investors made a deal that required Vince to buy out
the business through a series of monthly payments. Miss one, and the
younger Vince's ownership role would end. As anyone who encounters Vince
McMahon instantly learns, surrendering control is as loathsome to him
as dealing with a stepfather.

In the 1980s, for a number of reasons--most notably, the rise of cable
TV and the openhanded admission that wresting wasn't really a
sport--McMahon took the show national. Aided by a charismatic,
mustachioed blond he christened Hulk Hogan, McMahon took the WWF to
staggering levels of popularity. Popular singer Cyndi Lauper put
wrestlers in her videos and "managed" a WWF wrestler. "Queen of Soul"
Aretha Franklin opened WrestleMania II with a compelling rendition of
"America the Beautiful." Celebrities such as Mr. T, Mike Tyson, Liberace
and Ray Charles dropped in, adding luster and a touch of credibility.
Crowds as large as 90,000 attended some WWF events.

But it wasn't easy for McMahon to keep the whole ship together. Scandals
involving accusations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use rocked
the WWF. As Linda once said, "Vince was accused of being everything from
a homosexual rapist to a heterosexual rapist to a child molester to a
drug user and distributor. I think at one point someone asked him where
he was on the day Kennedy was shot." All the controversy eroded the
WWF's credibility, opening the door for WCW to capture its share of
hearts and minds, while McMahon spent less time promoting and more time
testifying.
It all came to a head in 1993, when the U.S. Justice Depart-ment accused
McMahon of distributing steroids. This was no longer a matter of
entertaining and giving the people what they wanted. This was time for
Vince McMahon to dig in and do what he does best: fight back.

"There's good and bad in everything, including the government," says
McMahon, who has admitted that he has taken steroids. "We came against
some people in the Justice Department who thought they could make a
mark. They thought we were easy. It took the government two years to
prove that it didn't have anything on us. They wanted me to
plea-bargain, and I was very outspoken--something about sticking it up
their ass." McMahon was acquitted.

Once he'd faced down the Justice Department, McMahon was ready to take
no prisoners when faced with legal challenges. This year, for example,
Rena Mero, a former WWF wrestler known as "Sable," displeased with her
plot lines, sued the WWF for $110 million and the right to her name.
"Almost weekly," she told USA Today, "I was asked to go on television
and have my clothes ripped off in some way." Once she declined to bare
her breasts, says Mero, she lost her championship belt and saw her
merchandise pulled from store shelves. Subsequently, Mero says that she
went to her dressing room and discovered that her things had been
smeared with human feces. Asked about the case, McMahon quickly snaps,
"That's been settled"--and then the sharp brown eyes await the next
question. (For her part, Mero has agreed to surrender any claim to the
"Sable" name and will stay out of wrestling for three years.)

Lawsuits are only one social struggle McMahon addresses fearlessly. As
wrestling grows, its societal impact raises issues related to violence,
sex and profanity. An Indiana University study of 50 WWF episodes, done
with television's "Inside Edition," reported 1,658 instances of grabbing
or pointing to one's crotch, 157 instances of an obscene finger
gesture, 128 episodes of simulated sexual activity, and 21 references to
urination.
"Anyone who says we're about violence," says McMahon, "I flip them the
bird and say, 'Hello?' Violence is about guns, rape and burglary. You're
not going to see Uzis, knives and guns on our show."

But what if that's what the people want?
"No need to go there. We're not teaching you to blow people up," says
McMahon. "Let's talk about sex: look at 'Beverly Hills 90210.' We're
very tame compared to that."
But there are indeed moments when even the most obsessive promoter loses
control. Big entertainment sometimes poses big risks. For the WWF,
disaster struck on May 23 at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri, when
Owen Hart, brother of former McMahon nemesis Bret Hart, fell more than
50 feet to his death while being lowered by a cable onto a stage. The
show went on, and while critics attacked McMahon for continuing the
match and what they claimed was his feigned concern (WWF announcers had
to convince their audience that Hart's death was real), McMahon knew it
was vital to make a statement.

The statement came with the following night's show. That evening's "Raw"
began with all WWF wrestlers and employees coming out to pay tribute to
Hart as a bell rang 10 times in his honor. Wrestlers cried during their
speeches. A wrestling follower and journalist named Bill Simmons, also
known as "Boston's Sports Guy," called it "the most memorable two hours
of television in recent memory....Suddenly these weren't characters
playing out their role in the grand play; they were simply working-class
guys trying to earn a living. Wrestling may be fake, but that's about
as real as it gets." For McMahon, the tribute only heightened his sense
that the WWF is not just a business; it's a family.

Family is particularly important to McMahon. Through the ups and downs
of the business, the legal battles and the personal challenges he's
faced, he's struggled mightily to build the sense of belonging and
security he lacked as a child. Fittingly, it was a family occasion that
brought him back to cigars nearly three decades after he savored them at
East Carolina.

"The cigar craze was really picking up five or six years ago," says
McMahon, "and one day, my son Shane and I are celebrating something, I
don't even remember what, and he says, 'How 'bout it, Dad? Want to smoke
one?' I didn't even know he smoked them. And I figured, 'Why not?'
"That experience with Shane took me back to college, to good times with
my friends. Conjuring up college was kind of cool. It wasn't cool to
take five years to graduate, but when I look backon life, I had good
times. I got married in college, and it was pleasurable."

Don't ever expect McMahon to make a cigar part of his promotional
shtick. "There was a time when cigars fit in with the Damon Runyonesque
view of old-time promoters who always had one," says McMahon. "It seemed
like the bigger the cigar, the more important you are.
"But I generally don't fit the bill of what a promoter is. I've never
smoked a cigar in an arena. I like fresh air. I like smelling things the
way they're meant to be smelled. So I want to be in an area where I can
enjoy the cigar. Sometimes in our business, that's late at night or
when we're closing a restaurant and I'm not going to bother anyone else.

"Best of all I like it when we get together at home [in Greenwich,
Connecticut]. There'll be 10 or 15 of us over for dinner, and when you
get the Irish side of my family with my daughter-in-law's Italian side,
it's a blast. We enjoy each other very much."

The women, however, generally don't like the smell of McMahon's beloved
smokes, particularly the Davidoff Double R. ("That's about all I smoke,"
he says. "I like one thing and then I stick with it.") Instead,
McMahon's favorite cigar-smoking venue is his four-car garage, where one
parking space sits empty. No chairs adorn this area. It's just an
austere slab of concrete where McMahon, Shane and the other men of the
McMahon clan can stand, smoke cigars, talk, slap each other on the back
and, for once in McMahon's life, chill out.

"Cigars are definitely a bit of a men's club for a moment," says
McMahon, "a real male bonding situation for me. We're always standing in
that garage. I like it that way. I'm not one to sit on my ass a lot. I
like to stand, to move around. Maybe some of the guys will sit on the
steps or on the hood of the car, but me, I can stand and see who's
coming. It's fun to dip a cigar in a little VSOP. I'll sip a little
brandy, and with a cigar in one hand and a drink in the other,
surrounded by good people, I'm able to relax, which is very difficult
for me.

"You know, the way I look at it, anybody who's worth their salt tries to
live life as best they can, to squeeze out of it what they can. You've
got to put more into it to get so much out of it. And so, to me,
relaxing on occasion with a cigar is just a chance to squeeze a bit of
relaxation into my life."

And then, as the men leave and the cigars are put out, McMahon will play
with his new toy. As a birthday present this summer, Linda bought Vince
a Bullmastiff puppy. For McMahon, it was love at first sight. The dog's
name? "Ruckus," he says proudly, pointing his thumb at his chest and
announcing, "I named him that." Years ago, dabbling in songwriting,
McMahon wrote a tune whose lyrics went, "I'm a man running wild, heading
for the top/Along the way, you're going to see a lot of men drop." A
lively ruckus, after all, has always been this man's best friend.

Oakland-based Joel Drucker writes about sports and popular culture
for Diversion, Tennis, HBO Sports and others.